


Signal, Noise and Distortion

by kusuriurikun



Series: Shibuya Continuum [8]
Category: Subarashiki Kono Sekai | The World Ends With You
Genre: (Quasi)Self-Necromancy, Astrology, Autistic meltdowns, Blood, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Fallen Angels, Feral Behavior, Gen, Left-hand-path magick, Math and Science Metaphors, Mathematics, Nightmare Fuel, POV Antagonist, Panic Attacks, Platonic Relationships, Readers are forewarned I let Sho say "fuck", Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Self-Harm, Taboo, Temptation, fun with attempted assassination of a local demigod, fun with the weaponization of mathematical formulae, is there a tag for "forbidden magicks via mathematics", swiggity swooty I'm bringing the tabooty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:02:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27070909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kusuriurikun/pseuds/kusuriurikun
Summary: Occasionally, Angels fall.All too often, the Fall is so that another may rise.All too often, these Fallen gift terrible knowledge to man.All too often, neither the Fallen nor the Tempted are aware of the price of their sins...until too far along in their path.Or...in some cases...areall tooaware.Due to the extensive nature of mathematical and esoteric references, these are included in an appendix at back.(Trigger Warnings in introductory notes.)
Relationships: Hanekoma Sanae & Minamimoto Sho
Series: Shibuya Continuum [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1902298
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12





	1. Main Story

**Author's Note:**

> THERE ARE TRIGGER WARNINGS, because we are now in what is arguably the darkest part of the story. _If any of these is a potential PTSD or other trigger or would be something you consider bad for your mental health, please feel free to skip_ :
> 
> Blood mentions, some semi-graphic depictions of self-injury in the midst of the Mother of All Autistic Meltdowns in a nightmare sequence, realistic depiction of a rather manic panic’s aftermath, religious imagery, inappropriate ceremonial magick references, comparisons with drug abuse, oh sweet LORD do Sho and Hanekoma end up in BAD mental headspaces
> 
> Seriously, this is the first one I actually feel obligated to throw the fic version of a Tipper Sticker on because there are known Triggers for folks _all over the fucking place_ in this one; it goes dark places, by its inherent nature, as we’re talking about the Fall of two individuals here.

In the old stories, some nearly forgotten and some almost genetic memory, there are stories of the Fallen.

The most familiar involved the Serpent taking pity on man, and giving him the gift of discernment, of Sentience...and in more obscure, more secret stories, explicitly doing so that Man would learn to be _Man_.

The second most familiar involved the one Angel gifted with free will refusing to bow to Man--and according to a number of far more obscure stories, actually refusing to bow to show his own obedience to the Holy.

And some of the stories almost forgotten involved the first that Fell who came down to teach Man those very things that made him different than the beasts--the arts, the sciences, to keep time, to know the signs, to clothe and paint himself, to make medicine...and to call forth things from the Imaginary.

And upon sensing the gunshots in the realm of the Real, and shortly hearing Sho Minamimoto cursing very loudly and holding his right arm and screaming about a _cheating fractal bastard zetta son of a digit who can somehow change a vector_...Sanae Hanekoma comes to a grim conclusion.

He could only hope that whatever happened that someday the Host might forgive him his sin.

* * *

When Sho ends up at the WildKat for the usual sparring and mathematics on the night after the kid gets shot-- _he_ gets shot--at the mural, he finds the lesson plans he’s used to from Hanekoma have changed _radically_.

Which is fine with him--that right arm still hurts, though dampened from the red-hot pain of earlier. Sparring in the dining area is honestly _not_ in his desired trajectory for once.

Tonight, Hanekoma leads him to the back office--a back office that somehow contains a small _library_ within, and an art studio, and more things than should _fit_ in such a spot--and introduces a new concept, that of transfinite numbers and sets. 

Sho is not 100% sure how this fits in, though it does certainly remind him of how he sees the RG and UG fitting together at points; all the same, though, it’s _zetta_ interesting.

It becomes even _more_ interesting when Hanekoma points out that Gödel was essentially trying to reverse-engineer _God_....or at least get considerably closer to the source of reality.

The night after that, there is some more calculus work, and then the conversation shifts right into another new subject of Newton’s esoteric work--on the finer points of alchemy, how (contrary to the usual thought) that it was not meant to turn literal lead into literal gold, but to refine man--body, mind, and Soul--into a higher vibe, a higher _frequency,_ as it were.

The next night, in the midst of Hanekoma setting up a cold-brew coffee apparatus as an experiment in that tesseract of a back-office, Sho is introduced to the works of Valentinus and the seven open steps--and the eighth hidden step--of alchemy of the soul.

In a subsequent night, he is introduced to the concept of isopsephy and gematria and encoding the nature of a thing in numbers in a discussion on coding algorithms.

The next night, Sho is introduced to the works of John Dee and Abramelin and the anonymous authors of the _Lesser Key of Solomon_ (with the caveat that whilst the entities do not exist in the UG, the underlying _theory_ is sound) and specifically to sigils--first being introduced as a binding condition (which Sho is not precisely happy with the thought of)...and then being introduced as essentially a distillation apparatus for specific Soul.

Hanekoma introduces Sho to the mathematics involved in creating a software defined op-amp and receiver--noting the comparisons to how noise is amplified and filtered in a sound system just as Noise is amplified and bound in a sigil-- even as he introduces him to the forbidden works of summoning.

The next day, in as isolated a place as the two of them can find, there is the first lab practical in which the Noise is amplified from its existing oscillation, brought forth into the complex plane, and then its wave function cancelled in what is a mathematical version of the Art of Summoning.

Sho finds it very odd and interesting that the Taboo Noise he's called up--a Eurobeat Boomer--does not immediately try to attack him.

Almost as if they have an affinity.

A strange affinity of being entities that will never, ever be _tame._

* * *

The next day--seven days exactly from the time the Composer shot the kid--Sho comes into the shop in a blind rage on how the Composer is trying to _hack the Game_ . That it was bad enough that the Composer had _killed_ a player, but had now put himself in as a _Player_ \--with the kid he’d fucking shot, yet!

Hanekoma does his best to reassure Sho--and reminds him that he, too, is also capable of changing at least the _spirit_ of the rules as Game Master. And he’ll soon have the tools to become the Composer and to rewrite the Game itself.

Over the next week, Hanekoma teaches Sho the very basics of Enochian and a few of his own secrets that have never been written down to tie the function together.

Sho pays attention to this as he has never paid attention to _anything_ in his life.

* * *

Hanekoma--when he’s alone in his back office and drops the glamour that he wears to observe the city he loves more than life itself--thinks and _hates_ what he’s having to do.

He wishes he’d had more time to prepare Sho properly, but he didn’t expect Joshua to shoot the kid to gain his own Player to throw the Game.

He didn’t expect Joshua to actually _join in the Game itself_ as an attempt to tip the card table.

He wishes he had more time, and he desperately hopes that this plan B works.

He also hopes--prays, really--that Sho Minamimoto will in fact have enough Imagination to escape the fate that’s been laid for him at this point.

He knows when the Host finds him-- _them_ \--he will not have an escape plan.

He’s more than willing to be the scapegoat. The Judas. The Saint crucified upside down. The Iblis who refuses to bow. 

The Fallen of the old stories, who damned themselves by giving Man the gifts that made him Human and separated him from the beasts.

Shibuya, for all its messiness, is a beautiful place, and he really wants it to grow and thrive with all its messiness. He sees the weeds in the Garden are flowers in their own right, really.

He just _really_ wishes he didn’t have to drag Sho in all this in his own disagreement with the groundskeeper.

* * *

This place in the back streets of Udagawa, Sho hopes, is isolated enough it won’t be found before the sigil is complete and events are set in place for his desired solution.

Unlike so much of what he’s learned so far, this one has to be done _live_ by its nature. 

The theory, the formulae, are sound. Sho knows the art of calling forth the taboo, in his own way, but as the intent is to call forth _himself_ it is not such an easy equation as, say, the Noise-beasts he tosses against the players like stray variables.

Sho knows he must have everything perfect for the refinery sigil to work.

The equations are simple enough--a variation on the Euler identity--but the placement must be done on specific points in space and time and attuned carefully, both within and without; this is the delicate part of the Work.

Too early or too far, and Sho will be pulled into the domain of the white noise.

Too far in the other direction, and the refinery sigil won’t work at all.

Too much or too little amplitude or frequency or phase, and things will work _strangely._

He shakes the paint markers, uncaps them. He just needs to have the work last long enough for his equation’s ultimate proof; he can deal with the airbrush-cabinet stink of acetone for the time being.

He concentrates. Recites the formulae, at once magickal and mathematical; it is one of his own devising, based on pi, a number he has always found deeply symbolic to self. Calling forth the directions and the mind, body, and spirit even as he draws…

...and is interrupted by what sound like footsteps crunching on asphalt. Freezes. 

It is just enough to cause Sho to stop the process of drawing and break his concentration...and introduce a jot, a jot in a character which should not have one, and which changes the meaning of the word and ever-so-slightly unbalances the equation.

A few seconds later, it seems to Sho the threat has passed, and he continues the work. But the damage is done.

* * *

One of the laws of the universe--one of its axioms, from which all other mathematical and other operators derive--is the basic concept that one’s particular set of “rules”, and really how one perceives the world, is dependent on your frame of reference.

In one frame of reference, Sho Minamimoto is screaming one hundred and fifty-six digits of pi in the Composer’s general direction; he only accepts flawless calculations and beauty, and the Composer has dared to interfere with both.

In a different--inner--frame of reference, Sho Minamimoto has a vision of how the world will be once this particularly annoying variable is replaced.

In the world to come, there will be no Game, or at least not as it’s played now.  
In the world to come, all will be accepted as they are.  
In the world to come, people will burn for the need for their own beauty such that it will be as essential as food or drink or oxygen.   
In the world to come, the world will be Art, and Freedom, and people will see the beauty in the new and the disposed-of and the flowers and the weeds.

There will be only one rule in his coming rule as Composer.

_So long as it harms not another Soul, do what thou wilt in accordance with your Truth and Beauty._

And with this thought--this act of will--a flare powered by the Imaginary in both numbers and will goes off, and all is colour and static and holy chaos.

A few days later--under the pretense of cleaning up said Taboo Noise refinery sigil--Hanekoma discovers the transcription error. Sighs. Erases the jot, reforms the letter to the intended version. Can pretty much tell where the kid apparently got spooked.

In the endless sea of imaginary numbers, the sigil comes to life like a beacon. Its own terribly strange function.

And--unbeknownst to all--the touch of an Angel _does_ have enough perturbative effects on a sigil attuned to one individual that it starts a subtle chaotic oscillation, giving its user the mark of his Beast.

* * *

When he finally manages to fish himself out of the background noise, Sho very quickly finds that the set has NOT been emptied; HAD it been emptied, he, or Megs, or someone else, would be Composer.

It wouldn’t be an apparently empty set with (for all anyone knew) the component primarily in another portion of the matrix algebra.

He looks at himself, and...is rather surprised at what he sees. He’s gained a _zetta sexy_ skin-job; he feels better than he has in his entire _life_ , like he could punch the _sun_.

He certainly didn’t account for THIS in the calculation, but...so he figures...perhaps this happy accident has just resulted in a refinement of his own function after all.

It’s only when Sho gets somewhere quiet and thinks on how to achieve his desired solution that he notices the constant buzzing in his ears and the snow in his vision and the perpetual itching-crawling-burning-numbness in his skin that wasn’t quite there before.

The snow, and the buzzing, and the pain-which-is-numbness-which-is-pain that will eventually become a discordant background note, a constant perturbation

* * *

Sho sits and nervously stims and bites his necklace and calculates--as much as his racing mind will let him (since he came back from the _other_ his nerves have been on a perpetual overdrive).

He maps out where the plans have went awry:

_The attempt at ending the Composer within the RG, an infinite set where he should have been bounded, failed:_

  * _Whereas, the Composer apparently operates in an axiom of choice outside the RG;_
  * Whereas, the Composer is in fact apparently capable of operating by his own particular axiomatic set within the RG, a particular domain wherein interaction with the imaginary axis is inherently limited;
  * Whereas, the average Reaper is bound by the axiom of choice;
  * ∴, further attempts to eliminate the Composer in the RG are unlikely to be successful as the Composer is a cheating Fractal Bastard.



_The attempt at ending the Composer within the UG, a physically finitely bound set, also failed:_

  * _Whereas, the Composer apparently also operates in an axiom of choice outside the UG, or at least this instance in Shibuya somehow;_
  * Whereas, a level _i_ Flare should have erased both player and Composer (being based entirely on the imaginary axis) and yet did not;
  * Whereas, the emo kid with the headphones is somehow back to play again in the Game;
  * Whereas, the Composer has fucked off to Parts Unknown, even though it should in fact be impossible to do so in this bound domain;
  * ∴, further attempts to eliminate the Composer in the UG using attacks purely on an imaginary axis are unlikely to be successful as the Composer is a cheating Fractal Bastard.



_Whereas,_ the Composer shows characteristics of being either in another dimensional set or potentially inherently active on both the real and complex frames in all potential domains;

 _Whereas,_ the Composer shows characteristics of being fractally a Bastard and also shows at least some characteristics of being able to shift frames of reference;

 _Whereas,_ this is a characteristic of hyperdimensional objects and their shadows on a lower-D polytope;

∴ _I need to find a way to literally fractally punch that polynomial prat so hard it literally knocks him_ **_out_ ** _of this dimension._

Sho hasn’t quite figured out HOW to literally knock out a local dead god, but he’s working on it.

The white noise in his head _burning in his veins_ **vibrating in his soul** tells him it should be possible to _transcend_ this function somehow.

* * *

One night, while asleep on the Memory Heap, Sho has a dream that is a nightmare.

In the dream, he defeats Joshua Kiryu and becomes the Composer.  
In the nightmare, he defeats Joshua Kiryu and becomes the Composer.

The two--dream and nightmare--are an equivalent set.

Upon his ascent, Sho transcends the bounding box that is Shibuya.  
Upon his ascent, Sho _is_ the bounding box that is Shibuya.

Sho frantically tears at the wall, looks down, and finds his own blood and jagged wounds on his abdomen and chest--he discovers in horror he has torn at himself.

He bites savagely at the barrier and finds he has sunk his fangs into his own right forearm--which he continues to bite even when he tastes his own blood.

Sho’s blood in his mouth tastes like electricity and concrete and diesel fuel and the broth for Doi’s tonkatsu ramen and Shibuya river sludge and the life of an unfortunate kid who became the latest contestant in the Game and the tears of his mother weeping over his dead body.

He hears nothing.  
He hears _everything_.

He tries desperately to tune out the noise and its source.   
He cannot do so as he _is_ the noise and the source of it.

The new Composer of Shibuya, filthy and feral and bleeding and folding in on himself as his very nerves scream in a runaway condition, screams the new song of Shibuya in a bestial roar.

* * *

Sho is still screaming when he wakes up. 

Looks down at himself to find he has not attempted to disembowel himself...but that the taboo-tattoo has changed pattern.

He sees his face in the side-view mirror of the subcompact in the Memory Heap he is on--and sees the taboo is spreading. Merging into the whisker-like marks on his face like tiger stripes. Actually forming a proper sleeve on both arms now.

The snow in his vision occasionally is showing technicolour spots, and the buzzing is worse in his ears, and when he can feel his arms it’s like they’ve been peeled and plunged into acid and stung by a nest of angry Asian giant hornets and deadened with pins-and-needles and perpetually ticklish all at the same time. 

Sho gives a grim, hiccoughing laugh, catching the irony of the mirror’s warning _Objects may be closer than they appear._

He knows the function is approaching excessive feedback. Excessive Noise in the system.

He has to break out of the sandbox soon or it will destroy him, he knows.

He can fix this if he can make it in time.

Time is precious because the function is becoming unstable.

The function is becoming unstable.

_The function is becoming unstable._

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* * *

Sanae Hanekoma wakes and enters the WildKat Cafe--and it looks as if a tornado has hit. Everything is tossed hither and yon, ransacked, the occasional bite mark on the wood of the counter and the furniture, a door torn nearly off its hinges.

The Angel follows the trail of destruction into the back room, the room of the everchanging library.

And finds literally every book on esoterica, and every book on electronic amplifiers, has been pulled out and looked through pell-mell and thrown on the floor, even as there is a desperate scrawl in a riot of mathematical functions almost as if trying to plot out a logarithmic--an exponential--function.

_Sho._

Hanekoma looks at the numerical and functional insanity scrawled on the table, the walls, the floor, in a red marker that almost appears to be blood..

He realises the function that his young student is trying to reverse-engineer in his Taboo-fueled madness.

Sanae Hanekoma, for the first time, allows himself to weep..

_Forgive me for what I have done, Sho.._

_Forgive me for what I have gifted you._

And for the first time in some time, the WildKat Cafe does not open at all.


	2. Appendix: Author's notes and terminology

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For once, we’re actually going into not only maths stuff but esoterica (the latter possibly more heavily than the former).

_**Author’s Notes:** _

The stuffle regarding all the Fallen--Essentially hinting at Abrahamic, and specifically Christian and Islamic imagery in regards to the Serpent and Iblis--and also some Gnostic and Yezidi counter-narratives. The specific narratives on fallen angels teaching humans most of the arts and sciences is from the [ Book of Enoch](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Enoch), which only survives in Christian canon in Ge’ez in the canon of the Ethiopian and Eritrean Dewahedo Orthodox churches (which, along with the Coptic Church, preserve many books of early Christian canon that were dropped in other Christian canon).

Considering that Hanekoma is essentially teaching Sho the tabooty in order to preserve Shibuya, I figured a parallel to (especially) the counter-imagery was appropriate; in the non-censored (original Japanese) CAT mural one of the Brainy Cat logo’s eyes is of a Cross of St. Peter (often wrongfully claimed to be a Satanic symbol--hence its censorship in the international version of TWEWY--but which actually represents humility and devotion, as Peter did not wish to be crucified in the same manner as Christ) which also would very much fit with the imagery of sacrifice.

The idea of Noise being, well, parallel to actual _noise_ and Taboo Noise in particular being essentially a runaway oscillation is admittedly my own artistic license, but is [ actually based on electronics theory ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noise_\(electronics\)) and there is actually a surprising amount of mathematics involved in modern noise-cancellation systems and even “white noise” and “pink noise” generators. Specifically the whole process of “going taboo” I tend to compare mentally to the concept of [ distortion ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distortion) in audio engineering--it’s what (when finely tuned) effectively drives the roar of an electric guitar, but can result in godawful feedback squeals if there’s TOO much distortion.

There is also, well...Especially with the themes of _the Fallen_ and _Taboo_ and freedom and will to change things, I couldn’t resist at least one shout-out to one of the more notorious ceremonial magick practitioners (who in life was all too fond of overt religious trolling!), and at least one (altered) version of pretty much [ the statement and concept that sums up Aleister Crowley if anything did](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_Will). (That said, Crowley certainly did not _originate_ the concept; the concept arguably originated a bit earlier in the [ Wiccan Rede ](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wiccan_Rede) as “An’ it harm none, do what thou will”.)

In ceremonial magick (and neopagan) circles, there is a concept of a “[left-hand path practitioner](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-hand_path_and_right-hand_path)”--pretty much the defining characteristic being the willingness of “left-hand path” workers to embrace the more dangerous paths to enlightenment, darker things, Breaking The Fucking Rules And Making Your Own, and, yes, the taboo. Sho is about as blatantly coded as a “left-hand path” Reaper as you can get, really-- _every official art pre-Taboo (and at this point, all the anime art too) has Sho with a blackened_ **_left hand_ ** _as if it’s already gone Taboo_ , he summons (and _transforms into_ ) Taboo Noise (and into Noise of the ONE animal that’s not even mentioned as part of the Oriental Zodiac but the _Western_ one), he actually summons _himself_ via a Taboo Noise Refinery Sigil (which has some inherent symbolism in the alchemical sense!), and pretty much his very defining characteristic is _crunching tradition and convention and throwing it into the heap because it’s all garbage._ In at least some left-hand path practices, there’s also very much an aspect of uniting with the divine in order to separate from it and make one’s own creation in turn.

(I think I can be forgiven at least a _little_ in that respect for the minor Crowleyan reference. :D (If _Pokemon_ can slip in a reference, so can I. >:3)

And really, you can say some interesting symbolism applies to _Hanekoma_ in that respect, too--as an Angel that has Fallen, and actually walks both the left-hand AND right-hand paths. The original “Brainy Cat” logo (sadly censored in the international version of TWEWY) shows this masterfully--the cat’s eyes are two symbols (an upside-down cross and a pentacle) that in common Western views are associated with diabolism, but which have many positive implications as well (the upside-down cross being St. Peter’s Cross and a symbol of humility and dedication to Christ, whilst the pentacle has a _lot_ of associations--the five wounds of Christ, or in Western esoteric traditions the four elements plus spirit/quintessence, or in Eastern systems the five elements). Hanekoma explicitly defies the rules and tradition for the sake of saving Shibuya from being undone (either by destruction or stasis), and in his own way is explicitly encouraging freedom and encouraging folks to expand their horizons.

As for the Taboo itself...I imagine it as, well, kind of astral rabies, and kind of astral meth, and kind of astral shingles. The description of what a Taboo-tattoo feels like is definitely from my own experience with shingles (too young for the shingles shot, got the chickenpox too young to get the chickenpox shot)...hell is being On The Spectrum and having a raging case of the shingles requiring _two_ courses of Valtrex. 

* * *

_Hoo_ boy.

So. This is, again, why you don’t let someone who does electrical engineering as a hobby and network engineering/comp-security as a career and a bit of an interest in theology/mythology in their nonprofessional quasi-career write stories about feral mathgeeks with Taboo Rabies. Otherwise, _this_ fic happens.

It’s my personal headcanon, as an aside, that actually successfully becoming Composer would have actually been the _worst_ possible outcome for him--that dream sequence is pretty much what I imagine would have happened, JUST before he ended up as a catatonic mess from the Great-Grandmother of All Autistic Meltdowns.

( _You bet your ass_ I headcanon Sho as autistic and not just because I find him Extremely Relatable and people keep telling me I should get evaluated for being On The Spectrum. He obviously doesn’t see things in quite the same way as other folks. He has a Very Obvious Special Interest. He’s (dare I say it) Socially Awkward and (I headcanon, anyways) really is Not Happy With Meetings because it’s veritable Sisyphean torture of having to sit and listen and not bring up a Sudden Relevant Point before it’s forgotten and follow social rules you Don’t Fucking Get for an hour and a half. Good god, there’s even quite official in-game depictions of Sho stimming by _appearing to bite a bracelet when flustered_ ; Sho is autistic and _you will pry that headcanon out of my cold, dead hands._ )

I’d also like to thank Willow again for a LOT of discussions re Sanae Hanekoma in particular, which really helped balance the equation to a _much_ better extent than otherwise would have been possible, and Leto, Siletrea, and Seb for additional beta reads. This fic would not be the fic it is without their help and all too many discussions late at night on Discord on Hanekoma and the nature of the Host and Angelic Stuff.

Happy Halloween, you zetta sons of digits. Good night, sleep tight, don't let the Wall of Grizzly bite. >:3


End file.
